eric s best friend. and kobe backed up eric. they had a terrific marriage and there was no problems whatsoever. reporter: but if the marriage seemed solid, there were questions about pegye. at least according to linda bechler, eric s mother. linda says pegye told her something in confidence just before she disappeared. she stopped me on the stairway as i was leaving and said, came up and said i have to talk to you. she said i m afraid i m going to jail. reporter: according to court documents, about a year before pegye disappeared, the couple sold their physical therapy business to another company but they stayed on as employees. then just four months before pegye vanished, the bechlers were fired amid allegations they had overbilled medicare for over $1 million. so when linda heard pegye had vanished i started thinking about how disturbed she was about going to jail. was pegye bechler capable of committing white collar crime? medicare overbilling? in my opinion, no. rep
there was a lot of animosity towards me. i understood why. reporter: all they saw was this hot young woman who had been brought in to replace their missing daughter. right. right. exactly three months to the day. i can t even imagine what they were thinking. reporter: pegye s family wasn t alone. detective sean murphy had also noticed the new woman in eric bechler s life. she was ostentatious. she was just a hot number as they say. she was cohabitating with him right after this horrible boating accident with his wife. reporter: so murphy arranged to bump into tina. said hey, if you have any information about this boating accident involving eric, your boyfriend, just give us a call. i gave her my card with my number on it. reporter: nothing came of it. tina didn t call. but someone else did. coming up, the best friend has second thoughts. kobe laker goes under cover.
re-interviewing eric and asking him about his relationship with pegye. he said his marriage was good, there was no problems with it. reporter: you didn t take his word for it? no. in our game we don t take anyone s word for anything. we look into it. that s what we did. reporter: they met with the improbably named kobe laker. eric s best friend. and kobe backed up eric. they had a terrific marriage and there was no problems whatsoever. reporter: but if the marriage seemed solid, there were questions about pegye. at least according to linda bechler, eric s mother. linda says pegye told her something in confidence just before she disappeared. she stopped me on the stairway as i was leaving and said, came up and said i have to talk to you. she said i m afraid i m going to jail. reporter: according to court documents, about a year before pegye disappeared, the couple sold their physical therapy business to another company but they stayed on as employees. then just four mont
i m innocent. you never said anything about anything. i have so. do i have to say it every week? reporter: kobe tried again. i protected you. i basically made you look like a saint in the interview i had with the detectives. reporter: a dead end. but detectives were now convinced that eric killed his wife. even though it didn t lead to anything, that conversation with kobe, that got you from suspicion to knowing? yeah, it moved it all the way over. we knew we had a homicide. reporter: but knowing it and proving it were two very different things. you didn t get to process that boat as a crime scene for almost a week. right. right. that wasn t good. that hindered the investigation. reporter: the boat, said detective murphy, was pretty clean. crime scene did find blood, just one drop, under one of the cushions. but not enough to determine
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